


I Think The Winter Will Be Wonderful

by Zigzagwanderer



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Office, Anal Sex, And is Defiant and Angry about it., Angst, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Arguing, Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren Fluff, Back And Forth Timeline, Blow Jobs, Boys Kissing, Break Up/Making Up, Brendol Hux's A+ Parenting, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Sex, Falling In Love, Feelings Realization, Getting to Know Each Other, Hand Jobs, Horny Kylo Ren, Hux was Beaten as a Young Man by his Father, Kylux - Freeform, Kylux Summer Fest 2019, M/M, Many Mentions of Hux's Hair, Misunderstandings, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Paintball, Pining, Porn, Protective Kylo Ren, Secret Relationship, Sexual Tension, Slow Summer Burn, Snoke Gets What He Deserves, Somehow This Turned Into A Farming AU, Summer Romance, Sweet Ending, Touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-10-14 12:30:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 10,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20600813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zigzagwanderer/pseuds/Zigzagwanderer
Summary: Hux is the uptight CEO of First Order Loans. Kylo Ren is their star debt collector. Then Summer happens, and everything changes.This is for the Kyluxxoxo Summer Fest.Thanks for reading! It's appreciated, and comments and kudos are wonderful!! (Title by Interpol).





	1. Time

September.

_“Nothing lasts forever, Ky.”_

_Not even this endless, incredible summer. Not even seeing Hux at work every day, wearing his dumb, ratty t shirts with his dumb, obscure jazz artists on. _

_Hux is leaving. Ren should be glad to see him go. To see him stiff-faced and angry and trying not to cry._

_“And that’s a good thing.” Hux is saying. His voice is strange. “It’s what I told myself right up until I left home.”_

_He supposes Hux means it as some kind of consolation. _

_The hope that even if love doesn’t last, then neither can the pain. _

_Ren works his sunglasses between his fists until they snap. _

June. 

Everybody at First Order Loans gets the memo from Hux. Everybody thinks it’s a _fucking joke_.

Some bullshit about ‘Temporary Staff Protocol Easements’, from the man whose job it is to make them all feel Permanently Uneasy. 

“A prank?” The General Manager continues shackling together his paperwork with crooked little clips. It’s an archaic habit. And, Ren thinks, very Hux.

“Why would I waste my time on rubbish like that?” 

“It’s weird, I know,” Ren deadpans, tapping the arm of his sunglasses against his leg. “Maybe you shouldn’t have put in all those hilarious one-liners?” 

They _always_ send Ren in to parley with Hux, because he’s tall and brawny and menacing, the best Debt Collector they have, in his trademark black suit that makes even serial defaulters think he’s come pre-emptively dressed for their funeral. Should they decide not to pay up what they owe. 

He really ought to tell Finn and Rey, sometime, probably, just maybe not yet, that Hux has never _once_ been intimidated by him.

Which is kind of cool.

And also kind of pathetic, when Ren rolls the realisation around his head, a chunk of ice in the dark, sweet bourbon of his own myth-making; to find that he fucking loves being treated like a nuisance for a change, instead of a threat.

Ren unbuttons his jacket and enthrones himself, as usual, in the shitty guest chair. 

“Surely,” Hux says, “even _your_ department can understand a few simple bullet points?” 

Hux’s office is pretty devoid of luxury, all told, with its battleship-grey carpet and polished steel filing cabinets, but Ren gets that it’s Hux himself that’s important here; he is, literally, Snoke’s golden boy, right down to his permanently frowning eyebrows and the glow of his short-back-and-sides haircut.

This late spring evening, he’s even wearing that tie with the dandelion-yellow stripe threaded through the teal. Like everything about Hux, it’s so fucking dull, it’s effortlessly edgy.

“Dunno, boss.” 

He makes it an offensive drawl, because he itches to scrape away that seamless gold every time he sits there, told off or doing the telling, curious to see how base a metal Hux is really made of, underneath. 

“Most of us _loan sharks_ carry knuckle-dusters, not guns.”

Hux aligns an errant sheaf with his fingertip. His face pinches shut. 

“Not amusing, Ren. Not amusing at all.” 

Mitaka comes in while Ren is idly wondering why Hux works in a trade he despises.

And just how hard Hux has to scrub himself each night to feel clean, before he can climb on top of whatever glossy-maned wife or girlfriend Hux no doubt sees as part of the executive package.

“Twenty minutes to the Paris teleconference, sir.” Mitaka sees Ren and flees, dropping the coffee and crumbling pastry he was carrying onto Hux’s insanely tidy desk; no photos, no dumb collectible figures here, thank you very much. 

“Boo.” Ren spooks back. 

“So,” Hux pointedly glances at his watch. “Did you not understand the concept of ‘early-finish-Fridays’? ‘Casual dress code’?" He frowns at a spill of coffee. "And please stop terrifying my secretary. It’s beneath you.”

Ren shrugs, outmanoeuvred by the peculiarly intimate way Hux seems to coerce better behaviour out of him. 

“Seriously, Hux? Weekly staff cook-outs? Free popsicles in the canteen?”

“Mr Snoke and I hope to control the inevitable Summer Backsliding…”

“I mean, did you finally get that personality upgrade?”

“…which is the bane of small businesses…”

“Are you a _real_ little boy now?”

“…by offering a relaxation of certain staff rules. There may be some team-building events we could all enjoy.”

Ren laughs out loud. Hux and the word 'relaxation' do _not_ go together. “You’re allowing us to play, so long at it's…your way?”

Hux actually stops working. “Oh, no need to thank me, Ren. After all, it’s not as if I don’t have enough to do, simply trying to turn this damn business around.”

Ren tilts his head. Scenting blood in the air. At last. 

He reaches forward to steal a bite of pastry, hounding Hux’s deliciously foxy annoyance. 

Because that’s the real sport here. Getting that flick of tail. That dangerous flash of flint in Hux’s aquamarine eyes. 

But Hux stabs his hand out at the same time, and they touch fingertips and both let go at once, knocking a tsunami of dark, bitter brew over the puritanical white front of Hux’s shirt. 

“Well. Shit.” Ren says, by way of apology.

“Fuck. Fuck. Holy fuck.” Mitaka appears in the doorway, halfway to having a heart attack. “I got you a bib, sir, remember? A _bib_.”

“A what now?” Ren blinks. 

Hux dabs at himself, unconcerned. “It won’t matter to Antoine in the slightest, Dopheld. He’s been dragging out these negotiations for weeks. I’m sure he’s working up to discussing shares, not stain removal.”

“He’s working up to asking you on a date. Sir.” Mitaka hisses, glaring at what is clearly a lost cause. On every level. 

“A what now?” Ren repeats. 

Hux snorts. “Really?”

“Why do you think he listens when you talk about your houseboat and your record collection?”

“I thought he was softening me up.”

“He is, sir. Only not only in the way that you think.”

“Well.” Hux looks more calculating than flattered. “Useful intel, Dopheld. Although I hardly think appearing bare-chested will be a professional response…”

Mitaka turns to Ren. Swallows hard but stands his ground. “Get undressed.”

“Excuse me?”

“Give Mr Hux your shirt.” Mitaka’s summer wardrobe is mainly vintage; wrap dresses and shifts. “Now. Uh, please, Mr Ren.” 

“No.” Hux and Ren shake their heads in unison.

Ren looks at Hux. 

Hux looks out of the window. 

He is, miraculously, _blushing_.

“Fine.” Ren is suddenly cooperation itself. He senses victory. Of some sort or other. “Anything for the company, right, Hux?” 

He strips his stuff off with a little bit of showmanship, and side-eyes Hux, who is fumbling and taking forever over his own plain cufflinks, head down and backed up against the filing cabinets. 

It’s cute.

Awkwardly, cock-achingly, _cute_.

Hux waits until Ren is actually handing his shirt over before peeling his own off and throwing it at Mitaka, who scurries off to the nearest washroom. 

Ren can’t for the life of him understand Hux’s…bashfulness. 

The General Manager is slim, for sure, but sexy too. 

He has a lovely shape, in fact, trim and toned, with a creamy, freckled complexion, and he smells of soap-scent and clean sweat and some kind of subtle, sandalwood cologne. 

Ren is suddenly aware of how hungrily he’s staring at all that peachy, pearly skin. 

Is suddenly aware of the distinct buzz of physical attraction. 

It’s low-key, but it’s there.

Fuck knows it’s been a while. Which is another downside to his fearsome reputation. 

Hux licks along his lower lip, nervously. 

Ren cannot tear his eyes away. 

Hux is all wet tongue-tip and hard pink nipples and flushed chest and Ren really, really gets why Antoine favours late afternoon video conferences.

He opens his mouth to say something…invitational?

But then Hux moves forward to pull on Rens’ shirt and Ren sees Hux’s back clearly reflected in the glassy metal of the cabinets behind him. Exactly what he was trying to hide.

There are three or four old scars, possibly more, running shoulder to waist, crossways.

They must’ve been nasty, must've been deep, to have lasted this long. 

Ren stops grinning and meets Hux’s mortified gaze. 

He cannot think of a single wisecrack or insult or complaint. 

And then it happens. Hux steps out into the middle of the room and straightens his spine and gives Ren such a fuck-you glare that Ren would melt if he wasn't too busy getting really hard.

“Sir, get to your desk.” Mitaka runs in and claps his hands and starts shooing Ren out into the corridor. “_Armitage_,” he all but shouts. “You have _one_ minute.”

Last thing Ren sees is them trying to do something to Ren’s shirt to make it less comically voluminous.

And then the sun slants in through the office blinds and Hux is bathed in it, rosy and with his hair ruffled and, for fuck’s sake, he is standing there staring back defiantly at Ren through those golden eyelashes and he is barely wearing Ren’s still-warm, borrowed shirt. 

Ren taps his shades against his thigh. Hard. 

Who knew?

That _Armitage_ Hux has a painful history.

That Armitage Hux has a life beyond First Order Loans.

That Armitage Hux is very fuckable indeed.


	2. Ash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (sorry this is like an extra chapter I just wrote on a long bus journey)

August.

_“Take your goddamn boots off,” Ren half-smiles, a little drunk._

_Hux groans. He’s flat out, in the shape of a filthy, slightly sun-bitten star. _

_There’s loam everywhere. Trailed through Hux’s houseboat. On the bushels of weird tubers Hux spent all day digging up. Darkening his damp tank-top and grimed deep beneath his nails, so that he smells the opposite of how he does at work. _

_“In case you didn’t notice, Kylo, as you sat watching from your deckchair, sipping mojitos, I have been toiling at the harvest.” _

_Ren laughs, softly. _

_“I noticed your butt in these shorts. Isn’t that enough?”_

_He suddenly straddles Hux’s hips; Hux’s eyes flash wide. Everything about this is so new. _

_Ren growls, struggling unsexily with Hux’s unfamiliar belt. _

_Hux finds the strength to grip Ren’s hair, and the kiss is rough, full of the burning day, the sweat and the adrenaline and the anticipation. _

_Ren slides down the bed, and gets Hux’s cock out. His mouth is wet, and hungry. _

_“Ok,” he says, amazed that he’s allowed to have Hux, like this. “You can leave the boots on for now.”_

Late June.

The second of Hux’s inter-departmental shindigs is better attended than the first. 

Word gets around; the food was weird last time, like eight kinds of salad and no saturated fats weird, but fucking amazing. And free. 

Also, Mr Ren thinks it would be a good idea if more people showed up. 

So, people show up.

There’s a bunch of trees and a patch of scruffy grass out back of their premises. Ren has taken to smoking there. 

Hux’s office overlooks it.

It’s surreal, how hard the asshole works. How his calculations or projections or whatever make him push his hands through his orange hair and fuck it up into spikes. How he drinks tapwater, instead of those fancy bottled brands. How he stood by the window that morning, after what seemed like a stressful phone conversation with that evil old bastard Snoke, and tried balancing his pen on his nose for ten minutes straight.

Ren kept wanting to smack his fist against the glass and startle Hux and say something sarcastic. 

But in the end, he just…didn’t.

“Hey. The boss put up paper lanterns. How quaint.” Rey walks over to where Hux has also thought, this time, to set out colourful overlapping rugs and big cushions, offsetting the chairs he’s borrowed from the boardroom. “And Finn? You owe me for putting in your FOL470’s, you lazy douchebag.” 

Rey adjusts her halter-top and hangs up her suit jacket on a branch. In Debt Collection, they all follow Ren’s lead, even down to the intimidating tailoring. 

“Never stop using American slang, Princess.” Mitaka pours her out a paper cup of juice, and Finn grins, conspiratorially, adding a shot of vodka. And another. 

He holds up his hands. “Ren’s orders. Everyone smiles. Everyone has a good time.”

“Ok,” Rey sighs. “But don’t let me get drunk enough to fuck anyone from Accounting.”

Mitaka rolls his eyes and whispers, “_again_.”

Wood-ash and spices continue to flavour the air. 

The sun’s starting to fall and the carnival lights strung above them are just starting to pick up the slack.

Ren watches the steady drift towards the grill. Music is grinding out, smoothing things over. People will be dancing soon.

If Hux is pleased he isn’t showing it. 

“You’re really not into _that_?” Ren points his severe bonsai of broccoli at the barbequing meat, having inexplicably fallen in love with dressed vegetables in the last half hour.

Mitaka’s let slip that Hux grows all the produce himself on some hippy-assed co-operative garden down alongside the river.

“I grew up on a farm. My father believed in his son and heir being…hands-on when it came to turning pets into produce. So, no.” 

“Fuck. Really?” Ren is surprised. Not by what Hux says but that he says it. 

If it was Rey or Finn he’d punch them on the arm, sympathetically.

But this is Hux. He’s getting used to the idea that he doesn’t want to punch Hux so much as make out with him.

“It’s like, there was this one time,” Ren says, slowly, “my Dad dropped by to tell us he finally got some work? He made us pancakes and said how big I’d got, then he took off in Mom’s car and we didn’t see or hear from him again for eight years.”

Hux frowns and Ren is pretty sure he’s about to have a conversation which will change his life, when people start coming over, hitting the salad bar _hard_. 

Ren shuffles out of the way abruptly and nudges into Hux and Hux could also back up a little but no, this is Hux and he always, always stands his ground. So they end up pressing together. 

Thank fuck. 

Because it’s so fucking _hot_ Ren thinks he’s blistering at the points of contact, like he’s pressing his bare skin against something frosty, until it burns. 

Neither steps apart, even when they can. 

“Shit,” Ren says, as Rose rocks up, smiling beatifically, as ever. It’s a wonderful thing to behold. A bluebirds and rainbows thing. 

“How’s Satan feel about his kids over at Legal wearing pastel sweats like that, Rosie?” 

“How come you Senior Management chickenshits are still hiding behind your suits, Ren?” 

Ren puts his arm up onto Hux’s shoulder, his hand curled casually around that slim, warm neck. It’s purely a power move. Showing solidarity in the face of evil. 

Up this close, Hux’s hair is like a fire. 

“So. Boss…what d’you think?”

But Hux is as stiff as the brittle plastic fork he’s gripping a little too tightly, as if he wants to shove it into his eye rather than join in.

Ren thinks he might even be trembling.

Rose wags a lawyerly finger at them. “Get casual, please, boys.”

There’s a ripple. 

Ren waits until it dies down then solemnly lets go of Hux as if that doesn’t _hurt,_ and then he loosens his black tie and snicks open the top button on his black, black shirt.

That’s it.

People cheer, irony-loving dumbasses. 

Ren notices that Hux is looking at the meagre inch of throat Ren has exposed.

What should happen next is that Ren throws out that Hux has seen a lot more of him than that.

Hux could snark back, quick and dry, like he does when they’re alone. 

Only Ren just tells everyone the show’s over. And Hux remarks that he has matters he needs to attend to, and reminds Ren about decibel levels and potential fire hazards and makes his way back inside.

The desk lamp in his office gets switched on and Ren sees Hux reaching for his laptop. 

He keeps meaning to ask how negotiations with Antoine are coming along. 

But then, he really doesn’t want to know.


	3. End

Late August.

_The elderly couple finally stop shaking Ren’s hand and carry on doddering down the towpath. Ren manages to get out from under the shitload of gratitude they just dumped on him and gets back to fixing the roof vent._

_Hux has borrowed Ren’s sunglasses. He looks at Ren over the top of them, and Ren wants to fuck him right there on the deck._

_“Adorable acquaintances you have, Ky.”_

_“Crazy seniors,” Ren shrugs. Hux is selling the houseboat and Ren’s good at handyman crap like carpentry, even though helping out with this feels oddly like building his own gallows. “Mixed me up with some other dude.”_

_“Come here.” Hux beckons Ren closer, and they kiss, in the sunshine. _

_Ren whines, softly. He wants Hux all of the fucking time now. _

_“Nobody could mistake you for anybody else.” Hux sounds amused. _

_He puts his arms up around Ren’s neck. _

_“I’m afraid I’ve known...for ages,” he whispers. “About Big Bad Mr Ren helping people get back on their feet. Restructuring their finances. Driving them to the monetary advice centre.”_

_Ren’s debt recovery rate at First Order Loans is one hundred goddamn percent. Hux is the only person who hasn’t believed that bullying could do that, and, being Hux, he’s poked around a bit and found Ren out._

_“Maybe you can convince me not to tell everyone at work.” Hux bites his lower lip and Ren gets hard. _

_He lets himself be pulled towards the cabin door. “It’s not like I don’t threaten_ most _of our clients_ most_ of the time, Armitage.”_

_“Of course you do.” _

_Hux slides out of his shirt and steps down into the cool, green-blue shadow of the galley, and his hair is like a bright penny, slipping under water._

_Ren follows, feeling dizzy from the lack of land beneath his feet. From the lack of having to look as if he’s the strong one. _

_And he takes Hux hard, and deep, and afterwards holds him, until Hux rises up wanting more, and they begin all over again. _

_And Big Bad Ren realises, that very afternoon, how close he’s coming to drowning in this, and how little he wants to be saved._

Early July 

“This is fucking juvenile.” Ren rubs at his headache, underneath his goggle-mask-helmet thing. 

Ideally, Ren wants somebody to suggest that he buddy up with Hux himself, for this shitty paintballing shit. He can’t very well volunteer to split from his own Debt Collection crew. That would be weird.

“Look. It’s nothing personal,” Rey lies; she doesn’t have any tells, but Hux not mixing well with others isn’t exactly confidential corporate information. “It just stands to reason that the Boss is awful at, you know…running. Shooting. Cheating.”

Because he loves Pharoah Sanders and eats tofu.

“Good. We’re all here.” Hux arrives with his customary clipboard. 

He also has on combat shorts and a tight black top. It’s Sunday and he scratches at his stubble while he consults a colour-coded list which no doubt scientifically divides them all up. His hair’s drying naturally in the sharp morning sun. 

Ren keeps his eyes on the popgun in his hand.

“So…Mr Ren and Ms Tico?” Hux straps on a holster. Around his thigh. Ren nearly discharges his weapon there and then. “You’re with me.” 

Rose is ruthless in strategizing them towards the game’s objectives. That’s expected. 

That she sacrifices herself when they’re ambushed by Accounting, not so much. 

And Hux is a fucking revelation. Climbing trees. Taking out the opposition with sniper-style shots. Stealing the pennants from the other fuckwit departmental teams without them even realising that they’ve lost.

“I was forced to hunt as soon as I could hold a rifle.” Hux eventually answers, while keeping watch from the hayloft window. The two of them are waiting out the remainder of the day in a remote barn. It’s quiet, and warm, and to a city boy like Ren, smells exactly like Summer should. “And with my father’s temper, being able to be unobtrusive was…essential.”

Ren looks at Hux, crouched forward on his knees, with his top riding up, exposing the small of his back, and cannot for the life of him imagine anything more obtrusive.

Then he hears a noise and pulls Hux over into the straw. 

It prickles like fuck. Hux has trapped Ren’s arm under his waist. But this is war, so neither one moves. 

“Hooves?” Hux is listening, propped up against Ren’s chest. Ren is trying to think of the U. S. Presidents in alphabetical order. “Sheep or goats, do you think?” 

Ren stares up at the roof beams. “Could be Mitaka? He was wearing those blocky kind of heels.”

“Yes. I did tell him that flats would be more appropriate for the terrain.” Hux shifts his slight but firm weight. Ren wishes he wouldn’t. “That’s why I claimed you, and let Finn and Rey have him instead.” 

Ren reaches across, politely, and not possessively at all, to get the straw out of Hux’s hair. The unsatisfied intimacy of it makes his stomach hurt. “And I thought you wanted me.” 

It’s pretty finely fucking balanced. On one hand it could just be Ren, bantering, as usual.

On the other, it could be an acknowledgment of some _somethings_ that have been evolving between them.

That lunchtime is a daily meet-up for them now.

That Hux is too busy discussing staff engagement with Ren to take Antoine's calls.

That Ren has started listening to jazz records based solely on the t-shirts Hux now wears around the office. 

Ren rests his hand lightly on Hux’s hip.

There’s a horseshoe nailed up above them. 

Ren knows shit about the countryside except that when you hammer at a raw piece of metal, like that, over and over and over, in the end it gets real tough. 

And turns out Ren’s right; Hux is fearless, because he's had to learn how to be, and he doesn’t hesitate, not for even a second.

He cups Ren’s face in one palm and looks him in the eye and says, “I’ve wanted you for quite a while, as it happens.” 

And he ducks his head down, to find Ren’s mouth with his own.

Early August

Hux has to fly to Dublin one weekend on a family matter. 

Ren sends him more than fifty dumb messages that don’t say anything, and doesn’t send a hundred that do.

Everyone else is outside having a working al fresco brunch party when the airport taxi drops Hux off at the office, so the first time Ren makes Hux come down his throat is in the stationery supply closet next to the ground-floor mailroom. Ren is starving, and relentless, and if the door had a lock on it he'd do more than just suck Hux's cock and let him pull on his hair.

“I missed you too,” Hux says, eventually. Trembling still, he puts down his flight-bag. “And Kylo? There’s something you should know.”


	4. Wine

July.

_It’s kinda sexy, all the sneaking around they’re doing. Being discreet, Hux calls it; _professional_._

_The drugstore queue’s really slow. Ren idly picks up a chapstick. Fuck knows he needs it; seems he’s developing quite a thing for loosening up his General Manager’s prissy little pout._

_Mitaka joins the line right behind him. Hux is happy when his assistant is happy, so Ren is trying not to terrify Mitaka at every opportunity, even if that's no fucking fun at all._

_Mitaka pretends not to notice the bunch of stuff Ren’s already holding; supplies based on nothing more than _hope_, and the way Hux heats up under Ren’s hands, like he’s goddamn dry tinder and Ren’s the spark he’s been waiting for._

_“Er, may I make a suggestion, sir?” Mitaka nervously removes the cinnamon-cream lip balm from Ren’s fingers. Replaces it with a tube of cherry-cola flavour. “I think you’ll find that would be better.”_

_“Better?” _

_“I made Mr Hux a spiced latte once,” Mitaka confides. “He was too kind to say anything, but I could tell right away that he didn't really like the taste.” _

May. 

Ren can easily see past Hux, he’s so fucking…_willowy_. 

The fair-haired woman's sat on the corner of Hux’s desk. 

And Hux is allowing it.

Tall and substantial, she looks like she’d eat Hux for breakfast. Washed down with a mimosa.

“What do you want, Ren? I’m in conference.” Hux has rolled his cuffs up to his elbows. It’s startling.

Ren looks at Hux’s wrists. Then at a tattoo Hux has running down the inside of his forearm. Accented cursive in some fancy, old world language. 

The best way to never find out what it means would be to come right out and ask.

“Uh, yeah. Mitaka said I couldn’t see you.” Ren definitely isn’t being pissy about being shut out like that. 

No, sir.

He slouches against the doorway, making himself comfortable. “Didn’t know you went for blondes?” 

“I’m extremely busy, Ren.”

“You also promised to help with Finn’s whole visa fuckup.” Ren shifts his weight. “If that’s not as important as your date, then…”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Hux snaps loud enough for the woman to look up from where she was frowning at Hux’s laptop. “I know you value him.” 

He takes the paperwork. “Let Finn know that I’ll work on it tonight, when I get home. Is that satisfactory?” 

Ren wonders if he should offer to help. They could get take-out. Wine, or whatever.

But instead he just nods. Leaving without hassling Hux any further is probably enough of a thank you, so he doesn’t add anything. 

“And Ren.” Hux hesitates as he’s reaching to shut the door. “She…I mean, Miss Christie, is here on business. From F.A.S.M.A.” He lowers his voice. “The fraud and strategic malpractice agency?”

“Oh.” Ren shrugs. “Should we be worried?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” This time Hux sounds tired. Ren would say a little sad, only he has no idea what that would be like. 

Hux looks at Ren. He's still not moving. “It’s just that…what you said about dating. And about my type being blondes.” There’s a pause. “I wouldn’t want there to be any…misunderstanding. That’s all.”

Ren understands less and less with every conversation he has with Hux. 

“Sure,” Ren rolls his eyes, because he should be bored by now, and not bewildered. He puts on his sunglasses. 

For one thing, isn’t the guy supposed be an asshole? 

“Whatever, Boss.”

But if that’s the case, then why does Ren goddamn like him so much? 

July.

The club’s dark. The booths are couched in velvet. Ren strokes the midnight fur of it with the heels of his hands, restlessly. He can’t remember ordering a drink, and yet there’s a whiskey in front of him. 

Hux and Rose are sat, heads together, at a table near the stage, discussing something complex and private. Even though it’s undoubtedly work-related, Ren would be jealous, because apparently that’s what he is now, a seething tangle of self-doubt and endless yearning, only Hux is making damn sure he looks over every once in a while, _owning_ Ren with hot, hungry stares. 

“You look flushed.” Rey has been dancing with that couple from Accounting that she’s seeing. “Hayfever?”

The underlighting dims further then, and the quartet starts playing.

The set is slow. Smoky notes and shimmering vocals. Ren watches Hux the whole time. 

Later, they meet in the nearest alleyway. They kiss until Ren is panting. Until it starts to hurt.

“Fuck,” he tells Hux, both hands in his hair. Mouth on mouth. Spit tasting of booze and blood. “You’re killing me. You’re so fucking beautiful.” 

“I want you.” Hux stops grinding at Ren long enough to look at him, dazed and sincere in that way he has that always makes Ren hard as nails.

Ren smooths over Hux’s waist, his hips, and where Hux’s cock is pressing out the bottle-green fabric of his suit. 

“No shit.” Ren can’t get any sass into it; it’s just a statement of fact for them both, after weeks of making out anywhere and everywhere that Hux’s ludicrous schedule allows. 

The noise from the club is choked off, the sky a mess of stars. The alley stinks like an animal.

Ren licks behind Hux’s ear, breathing in his cologne, eyes closed and imagining his tongue on Hux’s prick instead, the rim of Hux’s head riding against his bottom lip.

Hux groans. Ren’s finally, _finally_, fumbled open Hux's trouser buttons and is parting the folds of Hux’s shirt and underwear. 

“God. God. You’re wet.” Ren scrapes his fingers through the honey at the tip and sucks his damp fingertips. Hux kisses his own stickiness from Ren’s tongue like it’s fucking candy. 

They get Ren bare too and then it’s just grunting and grabbing, clumsy and desperate and so fucking good Ren has actual prayers buzzing around in his heathen brain.

“I think about you fucking me all of the time, Kylo.” 

“Shut the fuck up,” Ren butts his forehead against Hux’s cheekbone, in warning. “I can't stand it."

The idea struts about in Ren’s slutty mind constantly, among a million other things he wants to do with Hux. But to hear Hux saying that kind of shit out loud, clear and certain as he always is about the important stuff.

That’s something else entirely.

“All the time, Ren.” They’re leaning against the wall now, weakly. Hux is shaking and pressing in tight and Ren pushes his other hand up inside Hux’s shirt, chasing the silk of Hux’s skin, his ribcage and collar-bones and those pretty nipples. Ren wants the scars too, wants Hux to know he wants them, but part of him also realises that a shitty backstreet is not the place for that.

“In budget meetings,” Hux states, precisely. “All I can think about is having you inside me.”

Ren sees his fist slickly sliding up Hux’s shaft. It’s fucking gorgeous. The heat of it slipping against his own cock. The smell of them together. And Hux is watching too, and that’s what does it.

Hux’s expression is the most perfect thing that Ren has ever seen, raw and disbelieving. 

Ren starts to come, and it’s like an unwinding, an unknotting, and then Hux is coming too, making noises and biting at Ren’s jaw and throat. It’s over too fucking soon, but the sheer want of it, the way Ren needs Hux so badly he can barely wrap his head around it, _that_ doesn’t go away at all. Not even for a second. 

And it’s the most comforting fear Ren's ever known, that maybe this time it just _won’t_.


	5. Back

Early August.

Ren’s been picturing some cartoonishly green place. Bright and ripe and easy. 

“You must be concerned for my sanity, Kylo. All my efforts. The expense. To have challenged my father’s will, all to inherit _this_…”

Hillocky fields, stumbling down to a gritty beach, flayed white by the cold Atlantic. Splintered fencing grins nastily; rows of broken teeth braced with rusting, litter-flagged wire. The Hux farm buildings are unkempt, un-curtained, and really goddamn unfriendly. 

Ren shrugs, carefully. Roots and birth-rights mean jack shit to him. 

But this is why Hux worked a well-paid job that he hates. 

This is something Hux wants.

“I don’t know. We moved around a lot, when I was a kid.” 

His chest is pressed to Hux’s back. As far as he’s concerned, he’s only just found somewhere to call home. 

“There’s not a room in that house without a bad memory beaten into the bricks.” Hux speaks slowly, and the solicitor’s photographs slip to the floor. 

It was supposed to be a celebration. 

“I must be mad.”

Hux has packed away most of his kitchenware, so Ren has been allowed take-out. He’s half-hard, under the blanket, from hand-feeding Hux fries, of all fucking things. 

He drifts his mouth up and down Hux’s neck. 

“It’ll be ok. It’s the right thing. You always do the right thing. It’s what makes you such a prick to be around.”

Hux twists his head so that they can kiss. Salty kisses, bitter from the beer. 

Hux slides about until he can straddle Ren’s lap. Drags Ren’s shirt off his shoulders, biting along Ren’s jaw. 

He’s a little more forceful that usual, ungentle, pulling off their shorts and spitting between their bodies to make Ren wet enough to tug on with tight, gliding pulls. 

“Jesus, Armitage.” Ren is wrong-footed by the suddenness of it; the ordinary arousal he seems to carry around with him _constantly_ now is accelerating until he can’t breathe properly. “Hey. You ok?” 

Ren probably has grease on his hands, so he wasn’t even going to pet Hux’s hair until he’d cleaned up a little. Now he’s considering screwing Hux’s mouth with one thumb and rubbing his slit with the other. He feels Hux cup him roughly. It’s fucking heaven. “Armitage? You ok?”

“Don’t you want to have me?” 

Hux is flushed; it’s fucking gorgeous on him, the heat of blood, of desire. 

He topples them, forcing Ren to brace over him, and begins to rut wantonly upwards, legs spread.

“Fuck.” Ren swallows. His cock is nudging against Hux’s hole with every flex of his hips. “Jesus.” 

Hux wriggles his thighs about, knees rising and anchoring either side of Ren, so that the invitation is pretty fucking unmistakeable. 

“Don’t you want to put your big hard cock in me?” His accent uncurls; adding a sweet strangeness to his words.

On Hux, dirtiness is delicious. 

“Babe.” Ren groans, sparking and drugged at the same time. “You know I do. I want to be in you so bad.”

“Open me up then.” 

Ren blinks. 

“I bought some…stuff. In the drawer.” When Ren doesn’t react, he huffs and leans sideways to get it. 

“I just…” Ren kneels out of Hux’s way and stares down at him. He’s beautiful, even when he’s struggling with basic packaging. “I get that it’s scary. The responsibility. Like, when you get something you really want? And I get that you’re…you know…getting revenge on your Dad, so it’s complicated…emotionally…for you right now, and we said we’d take things kind of slow…”

“I don’t need you to fuck me to steady my nerves, Kylo. Or because my father was a violent, homophobic monster and I finally got the better of him,” Hux interrupts, frowning, fiddling like a dumb-ass with the seal on the bottle. 

“I want you to fuck me because I’m in love with you. Idiot.”

He finally peels off the plastic. Ren is silent for so long that Hux looks up at him inquiringly.

“Give me that.” Ren shoves Hux onto his back and lifts his leg up by the ankle and pops open the cap with one hand. 

September.

_The sky still says summer, but its smile is cold. _

__

_Snoke has absconded. With everything. _

__

_People arrive for work on Monday morning to find autumn leaves scudding across the car park, and the First Order Loans offices picked clean, even down to Hux’s stupid little dish of paperclips. Ren bends to pick up some strays that have been spilled; a trailing spangle of unlinked chain leading away from where Hux’s desk used to be. _

__

_He brushes down his suit. Even that action makes him think of Hux. His bony fucking hips. How he’s been taking in Ren’s dry cleaning with his dry cleaning lately. The way he comes._

__

_He goes back out into the lobby, to the shouting and the shock and confusion._

__

_Finn’s kicking the fuck out of a wall. _

__

_Mitaka’s not doing anything, which is somehow worse._

__

_“Where’s the boss?” Rey spits out, and she’s not the only one asking_.

__

_They all look at Ren; maybe him and Hux aren’t such a secret after all_. 

__

_But for once, he doesn’t have a goddamn clue what to say._

Early August (Continued)

Hux comes with Ren’s fingers working him wide, and his balls in Ren’s mouth.

“Can we go back to talking about my complicated emotional state now?” Hux says, hoarse and happy-sounding and skimming a finger through the mess on his belly. 

“No we fucking cannot.” Ren says, and goes sit against the headboard. “C’mere.”

They don’t try anything fancy. First time and all. 

Ren lets Hux take him how he wants, kisses him and looks at him and just says how lovely he is. 

The torture goes on for a while. 

Ren’s own hands can’t settle; they look so hot on Hux that he wants them everywhere at once. He loves that Hux bites his lower lip in concentration when he finally fucks himself all the way down.

He loves Hux.

“God. Your dick. It’s bloody huge, Ky. Ky, God. Is it good? Am I good and tight on you? Tell me.”

Ren nods. He can’t help pushing up now.

"Oh. God. Want it all in me. Harder, Ky. Fuck me harder. Want your come in me.”

Ren manages a moment more but Hux starts gripping him and making these rising, gasping little noises and Ren’s done.

He fills Hux up and the wooden ceiling of the houseboat blurs and shakes and could actually fucking fall in on them for all he cares.

“Jesus.” He can’t let Hux go. 

He just fucking can’t.

Hux is holding both of his hands. His hair’s in chaos. It’s adorable.

“So.” Ren’s thinking of Hux’s big old virgin desk. “How d'you feel about me fitting a lock on your stupid office door?”


	6. Mate

October.

Miss Christie pockets her F.A.S.M.A. credentials and pushes past Ren, checking every room along the hallway, finally disappearing into Ren’s underused kitchen. 

Underused in that Ren’s never made a goddamn pecan pie in it. 

Not underused in that he’s screwed Hux up against the breakfast nook pretty much every other day over the last few weeks. 

Until he didn’t. 

Because Hux has gone.

Ren reluctantly follows the highest of heels. 

“So, mate.” The investigator turns and coos, all faux-friendly. “Where the fuck is he?”

For one weird moment, Ren imagines what it’d be like if they actually found Hux in there, if he was just standing _right there_, in his Miles Davis t-shirt and borrowed underwear, tutting because the peanut butter wasn’t freaking organic enough.

But there’s only take-out debris and some broken shot glasses. 

And six foot three inches of angry officialdom. 

Miss Christie sparks the end of her cigarette almost with rage alone, and then offers Ren one, as if they were pals from way back, catching up. 

“I need a cosy little chat with your Mr Hux.” 

Ren shakes his head, more at the idea of Hux ever having belonged to him than because he’s above bumming a smoke from an enemy, now that there’s no-one around to tell him not to hurt himself like that, that he’s too precious to _waste_ like that. 

“I gave it up,” Ren tells her, and he isn’t lying; he has every symptom of withdrawal from love he can think of. 

“And when I say chat,” Miss Christie continues, conversationally, “I obviously mean ‘nailing your boyfriend’s ginger nuts to the nearest lamp-post’.” 

“Better get to the back of the line.” 

She stares at the stubble and shadows on Ren’s face. 

“Hux endangered my five-year fraud investigation into Snoke’s criminal empire, with his…Robin fucking Hood antics. What could he have possibly done to you that’s worse?” 

The feeling of wanting to puke rises again. 

Ren leans against the edge of the black marble counter-top. A memory, of lifting Hux up onto it, of kissing between his legs, of making him cry out, rises up even quicker and messier than the nausea. 

“He really did it, then?” Ren doesn’t know why he’s prolonging the pain. It could be that he’s at the stage where just _talking_ about Hux to someone, anyone, even if it’s to bitch and _burn_ about him, is still so longed-for, so _necessary_, that he’d even consider teleconferencing with Antoine. “He really skimmed money from Snoke’s accounts before First Order Loans went under? Like, you’re sure?” 

Ren gets a brutal nod. 

“Brave little fucker, though, isn’t he? Considering old man Snoke’s not really someone you’d recommend shitting on like that.” Miss Christie sounds like that admission stings. She puffs out poison. “And clever, too. Diverted a steady trickle of funds since we first told him to shut the fuck up and not to try any…_corporate heroics_.” 

“Swindling a swindler doesn’t make him a hero.” 

Miss Christie looks at Ren as if he’s just about the dumbest fuck she ever met. “Checked your bank account lately, loverboy? He gave all of the money away. To you fucking lot of dipshits at First Order Loans. Transactions all pinged last night. Honestly, I don’t know why he fucking bothered.” 

Ren has an inkling of what Hux was up against. 

"What?"

“Call it staff severance pay, wages owed, whatever. All above board and non-recoverable from the whole steaming financial shitfest, before you ask. Must have had some illegal legal help.”

Ren stands up straight for the first time in weeks. 

Watches Miss Christie snap on her sunglasses. 

In October, he thinks. What an asshole. 

At that moment Ren’s cellphone starts bleeping.

It’s Rey. 

Finn. 

Even Mitaka. 

A few of the others. 

He’s fairly sure the messages will all boil down to versions of ‘why the fuck can I suddenly afford to eat again?’ 

“I get that he was smarter than some old mobster.” Ren watches her leave. “But you’re the fucking fraud squad. How’d Hux fool you?” 

Miss Christie stops. Ren thinks she’s gonna punch him in the balls. 

“He stuffed it all into some tiny little wiener of a petty cash account. Insignificant. Right under my frigging nose.” She flicks her cigarette past Ren’s head. It singes an eyelash or two on its way to sizzling in the sink. “I even asked him about it once. He looked bored and told me it was the _‘bloody Summer Easement fund’._” 

Ren’s front door slams shut. 

He picks up his cellphone. 

But he doesn’t check his messages. 

And he doesn’t check his goddamn banking account. 

What he does, is to check the times of flights to the west coast of Ireland. 

He’s going home. If home will still consider having him. 

July. 

_ “Jesus. Jesus.” It’s death. It has to be. _

_Hux eventually slides his mouth off Ren and looks up, lips wet with come. “I was raised a Catholic, you know, Kylo.”_

_Ren still has a piece of toast in his hand. His pants are around his ankles. His vision slowly clears, like butter, melting to transparency._

_“Uhhh. Fuck. Right.” Some of his crumbs have fallen into Hux’s hair. “Should I say sorry?”_

_Hux stands up, naked. Steals a bite, his tongue chasing honey. _

_Ren growls and starts walking Hux backwards, from the kitchen to the bedroom._

_He wonders if he should ask Hux to move in with him. Marry him. Fuck him with that long, beautiful cock of his. _

_“No apology necessary,” Hux smiles, the kind of smile that is happy, then sad, then happy again as he looks into Ren’s eyes. “I’ve been an atheist for quite a while now. Thank God.” _


	7. Pass

September.

“Ky. At last.” Hux turns from the window. 

His flight bag is on the couch, so it’s pretty obvious that what Hux is _really_ waiting for is his cab. 

No matter what the tension in his shoulders is saying. 

“I went to the office, or what’s left of it, but Rose said you’d all gone.”

He steps forward. Well, this is Hux. Ren automatically admires the sheer fucking audacity of him. 

Never back down, and all that crap. 

“I’ll pass, thanks.” Ren holds up a hand. He feels…bruised. “On the green fucking tea. And the apology.”

He keeps his distance, circling as Hux stops. 

Ren’s entire place smells of Hux, now. 

Of miso and the sharp scent of his sweat. It smells of the inside of Hux’s mouth. His hole. The red berries he brings home from the co-op garden. It smells of his hair products and all of the outdoors he constantly brings in, in some weird, abstract way; leaf and loam surrounding him like some intangible perfume that Ren’s become addicted to, intoxicated by. 

And it always, _always_, smells sweet, of the pastries Hux eats so _carefully_, not because he’s a pernickety sonofabitch, as Ren used to think, but because each little sugared flake means something; that Hux can have the things he wants now, that he works real hard, and he deserves them. That nobody’s gonna beat the crap out of him for wanting pleasure in the first place. 

Hux exhales. 

“You’re right. I was made aware of Snoke’s…endgame. But I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t want to put you in my position. Knowing that your colleagues…”

“Friends, Hux.” Ren takes off his tie. Fuck knows why he’s still got it on. “The people I’ve been drinking with all day are _friends_.”

“…were going to lose their livelihoods. That couldn’t be stopped, Ky. And now that F.A.S.M.A. has my evidence, hopefully that evil man won’t be able hurt anyone else.” Hux lifts a shoulder, swamped in one of Ren’s sweaters. “I didn’t want you to carry that secret around all summer.”

“Jesus.” Ren wipes the damp fog off his face. Shivers.

Fucking Autumn.

“The bullshit _staff easements_.” Ren laughs. Hux frowns. “Keeping us all happy with trips to the seaside. Shit. I am so fucking stupid.”

Hux moves his paperback from the arm of the chair and perches, watching Ren weave about. They both know that Hux hasn’t got time to sit down. 

He’s supposed to be flying out to his farm tonight. He’s supposed to be flying back tomorrow.

“I have been trying to get _something_ out of the whole mess. For everyone. If you could please just come here for one moment and _listen_…”

“Summer’s done and F O Loans is done, so I guess we’re done too.”

“Kylo. Stop this. I’ve tried to talk about the future. You _always_ change the subject.”

“You keep saying it’d take real money, to get your damn dream up and running. I thought…”

“That I was too weak to see it through?” Hux gets to his feet. 

“No.” Although yes. But not weak. Ren can’t think; he’s absorbed too much emotion from everyone else. He feels like a fool. And he’s always supposed to be the strong one, not the scared shitless one.

“In case you hadn’t realised, Kylo, I am out of a job as well.” 

“And there’s nothin’ left for you here...”

“I’m saying that maybe it’s time. But that it’s also going to be bloody hard work, which is why I didn’t like to assume…”

“Did they pay you? Is that it? Some kind of…fee? From that blonde? Like an informant fee?”

“Now you are being ridiculous, Ren. And loud, I might add. It’s a government department. Of course they didn’t pay me.”

Ren smacks his palms against his pockets. No smokes, because. He takes out and looks at his sunglasses. Or, more accurately, his father’s sunglasses. 

“Did you sneak a little bonus out, then, Boss?” 

Ren slips back into that ol’ banter so easily. That ol’ back-and-forth. 

“Before Snoke finally pulled the plug? That it? No-one would blame you, working your balls off for that shitty company, and all the time that old bastard was playing you too. D’you even get mad, Hux? Or d’you need some kinda software upgrade for that?”

“Don’t raise your voice like that, Ren. It’s beneath…”

“…me. I know. Because I’m not like you. I’m not some self-righteous, self-indulgent Nature Boy who wants to run off and rebuild Eden in the fucking armpit of the universe…”

Ren blinks. 

Hux is taking off the sweatshirt. He hangs it on the peg and gets his own jacket from the closet and puts it on instead.

And Ren still isn’t hearing a denial. 

“Maybe it would be better if I just took the rest of my things.” Hux starts picking up possessions and pushing them into his bag. It takes so long and involves so many rooms of the apartment that Ren suddenly gets that they’ve been actually living together for a while. 

“Nothing lasts forever,” Hux says, finally, stiffly, and it’s not exactly a goddamn explanation, as far as Ren’s concerned. “That’s a good thing. It’s what I told myself every day until I left home. Every time he raised a hand to me.”

The blankness on Hux’s face makes him look young. Not that are any photographs in existence of Hux as a kid, so Ren doesn’t know squat about it, but when Hux is asleep, Ren sometimes thinks he can tell what Hux might have been like, before the first blows started to fall. 

Ren works his shades between his fists. Until they snap. 

Because Ren also knows, from experience, that’s what some motherfuckers look like, when they’re not exactly telling you the truth. 

Late August. 

_Hux, bowed forward in Ren’s lap, is something else. _

_“Tickles. You kissing there.”_

_Ren mouths along the tattoo, inside of Hux's arm. From wrist to elbow. “I know what it says.” _

_It comes out way too proud. _

_“Really? You know poetry? Written in Gaelic, Ky?” _

_Ren can tell Hux is wrinkling his nose. Scrunching up his eyes._

_“I took a picture.” Ren keeps still. Until Hux can move. It’s maybe too much, like this. He’s talking to distract them both. “When you were asleep.”_

_“Creepy.” Hux adjusts his weight._

_“Damn right. Asked around. It’s my business, what my boyfriend has written on him.”_

_Hux is slippery. Starting to flex his spine a little. _

_“The words...so…fucking…feisty. Fearsome.” Ren licks the back of Hux’s neck. “I think I love you for it.”_

_Hux twists his head so he can stare at Ren. _

_Ren slips one hand off Hux’s hip and around front, to play with that lovely cock of his. _

_He means it._

_“Yes. Well.” Hux kisses him softly, and rises up like the goddamn sun in the morning. “Maybe you really shouldn’t.” _


	8. Tag

Mid October.

It’s fucking _freezing_. 

Ren looks to his right, and the fields are endless, and greenish-blue. To the left, the sea is endless, and blueish-green. 

There are grey, salt-bleached walls running down the flattish hills, and slanted, wind-bent trees. 

Everything is coppered with the pinking, pearling light of early morning.

It looks on fire, like it should be warm. But it’s not.

Ren was dumped at the last village before the Hux farm, by some mumbling, griping, half-asleep small-city cab driver, so he’s walked for fucking _miles_ through the silence of the headland.

Every step is a question asked, and answered.

The right thing to do has never, fucking actually, been easier.

The end of the road becomes the start of a track, leading to a bunch of stone buildings.

It looks worse than the damn photographs, but that really doesn’t matter. 

Because Hux is right there, washing himself in the yard. Shivering, and stripped off to a pair of unlaced work boots.

The pump coughs great gouts of ice water over him, and Ren sees how his ribs and hips cast shadows on his skin. 

Even as Ren gets closer, Hux _retches_ with the cold. 

“For fuck’s sake.” He stomps, scowling, past Hux to the open kitchen door, and slings his luggage inside. It’s so gloomy that the airport tag on his rucksack becomes the brightest thing in the room. 

When he turns back, Hux is just standing there, looking at him, and the sheer surprise and _hunger_ on his face would be fucking funny, if he wasn’t shaking so hard that he might just bust apart.

“Ky. I…”

“Shut up, will you?” Ren wraps Hux up in the mangy towel that’s half slipped off the railing and into the mud. Puts his body around Hux’s body. Rubs his jaw and the side of his face into a tangle of wet, glowing hair.

“Can’t seem to fix the generator,” Hux stutters out, bent into Ren’s shoulder. 

Ren nods. Wants to kiss the fuck out of him. Fuck kisses out him. Wants to _not_ let go, ever again.

But he does, if only to shove Hux towards the relative shelter of the house.

“It’s ok, boss,” he promises, and wipes his eyes, and starts frowning around for a tool shed or some fucking thing. “I’ll fix whatever you got that’s broken.” 

November. 

_The double-digging’s done._

_They’re both too tired to eat, or wash. _

_Ren wearily throws back the blanket, and Hux makes room. _

_They catch each other’s eye. _

_Hux smiles, and curls over, onto his knees._

_“Take this off.” Ren sighs, gruff, and greedy, and starts lifting up the hem of Hux’s shirt._


	9. Star

Winter.

_"Put your beanie on. It's freezing." Hux rests his chin on Ren’s shoulder, grimacing over at the unwrapped parcel. “And that’s not the seed I ordered?”_

_“Nope. Herbs are fucking dull. I got us these little motherfuckers instead.”_

_The label has a picture of a sun on it. “Habanero chillies, Ky? Really?”_

_“Yeah, ‘cause, y’know, you're such hot stuff, babe.”_

_Hux exhales, and makes some shitty, prissy comment about inclement Irish weather and big handsome idiot boys who buy magic beans. _

_But he doesn’t take his hands away from where they’re tucked around Ren’s waist, all the same. _

The days are short, but also plenty long enough; the property fights them every goddamn step of the way. They sow and shore up, cut back and mend, replant and repair. 

The grind doesn’t stop just because it’s fucking Christmas. 

Ren drags a stump into the yard and Hux nails a fence-wire star to the top. At midnight they step outside, to toast it with the last of the whiskey, their blanket dragging in the fresh crust of snow. 

The only gifts they give are one another.

It’s ok; it’s enough. Ren wakes up every morning, already tired, already sore, with Hux prickling and sticky, grumbling and bony, across his chest.

He cannot believe his fucking luck.

Somewhere along the way, when they talk about family, Hux stops sounding bitter.

“In the village, they told me that Father was too drunk to change a light-bulb, these last few years.” 

Hux is perching on the lid of the toolbox. Ren’s reply is muffled. This time it’s the hot fucking water system, which is just peachy.

“That one? The compression spanner?” Ren has to ease his head out of the boiler housing and twist a little and point with a screwdriver. “Armitage? Remember?” 

Hux nods, sweetly serious, and dutifully passes it over.

“Sorry,” he yawns.

“Take a break. Those accounts damn near killed you last night.”

“No, Ky.” Hux corrects, business-like, like he was in his cufflinks and tie-pin instead of buck-naked except for Ren’s old baggy hoodie. “I have calculated that poverty and starvation will likely kill us.” 

He idly touches Ren’s ankle-bone, where the thick woollen sock’s ridden right down. “And, I need to learn these skills for myself.”

Ren pauses. Hux’s insecurity ghosts into his conversation a lot, lately, just when Ren’s own demons have started to leave him the hell alone.

Hux is maybe expecting Ren to tire of playing house, like his mother did. 

Especially when the house is kicking the shit out of them both on a daily basis.

“Hey, I’m invested here. The chilli harvest, yeah?”

Hux smiles, but it’s polite. 

“Ok.” Ren doesn’t know what else to say. He leans up. “Try the faucet?” He scratches the cobwebs off, and the plumber’s grease he’s been using smears diagonally across his face. It burns like fuck and he uses his discarded t-shirt to wipe it away, and while he’s about it mops the sweat out from under his arms and the back of his cricking neck. 

Ren catches Hux _not_ rushing to turn on the faucet. In fact, Hux swallows hard. Glances away from Ren and worries the curve of his lower lip.

Ren stares at him. “Fuck. You actually have a _thing_.”

“A what?” Hux brushes a flake of rust from his fingertip.

“For me, doing shit like this. Fixing shit.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I only just noticed.”

“You’re delusional.”

“Goddamn. You have, you know…a kink, for it.”

“Bloody well let go of me, Ky,” Hux warns, but not with any real weight. “Your hands are filthy.”

“Course they are, _sir_. I’m just the handyman. Sir.”

Hux snorts, amused and aroused. Ren crowds him and crawls them backwards, all shuffling elbows and scuffing heels, across the dusty floorboards, until they make it to the nearest island of carpet. 

Hux’s sort of forgotten about his scars, now that he knows Ren neither avoids them nor fetishizes them, but Ren is careful, even when the fucking is rough. 

They strip. 

Ren bites and sucks until Hux is blotched and murmuring. Runs his teeth across all that new muscle, the paling tan, the sparkle of freckles that have somehow yet to fade.

“We have some apples left, Ky. You don’t have to consume me just yet.”

“Jesus. I want to, babe.” Looking down, Ren feels like he’s gonna pass out. Hux’s prick is growing long in his hand, his eyes are drowsing with desire, his nipples are hard and spit-shined. “I want to eat you out. Lick your hole out ‘til you come.” 

It’s hardly great fucking role-play; if there was some clever script writing itself in Ren’s mind, then it’s leaking out faster than his cock is starting to drip, at the sight of Hux like this; all eager, all beautiful and blushing, all _his_.

He pushes Hux’s thighs apart, bends his head and inhales. His mouth is goddamn watering.

He makes his tongue flat and wipes it underneath that wet, pink cockhead. 

Hux groans Ren’s name aloud, and it echoes around the corridors, the hallway, the rooms; an exorcism. 

Ren does it again. Uses the tip to tease. He’s like iron, rutting slowly.

“Fuck me with your whole hand.”

“Jesus, babe.”

He knuckles at Hux’s hole, blunt and steady, in promise, and Hux starts begging, really _begging,_ to be filled.

Ren leans on his elbow to stop himself from shaking.

Somewhere downstairs, the telephone begins to ring.

Ren opens his eyes, panting. Hux glares across at him for a long, indecisive moment, then squirms away, as he must.

When it seems like it’s not a wrong number, and Hux ain’t coming back anytime soon, Ren goes back to his pipes.

He’s finishing up when Hux appears at the top of the stairs. 

He still slides around the house; it’s kind of heart-breaking, how he still avoids certain steps that creak, certain doors that grate on their hinges. 

“That was Miss Christie.” Hux doesn’t sit. Just kind of stands there. “Snoke…Well, it looks as if one of his…generals, or subordinates, or whatever he called his…accomplices…well, they cut him in half. With a blowtorch, apparently.”

“Christ. No fucking way.” 

Ren wonders if he should sell the gun he bought secretly, out of fairly well-placed paranoia. In case Hux’s part in things got out to the wrong people. It isn’t like they don’t need the cash, or as if he knows how to shoot the fucking thing worth a damn. 

"Yes." Hux answers simply. "They found him in one of his illegal warehouses.”

Hux leans against the wall, fiddling with a picture frame. His mother fake-smiles out at whoever took the photograph, a huge washing-basket weighing her down.

“And there’s something else…” Hux waits until he has Ren’s attention. “I'll completely understand if you don’t believe me, but I just found out that there was indeed a fee. From F. A. S. M. A.”

Ren folds his arms. 

“For the information I was able to provide.” Hux’s frown deepens. “I can refuse it, if you think I should.”

Ren steps across the hallway and holds Hux, thumbs rubbing the smooth contours of his shoulders. He brings Hux’s chin up a little, to kiss him on the mouth.

“Babe,” he says quietly. “You tell that bitch you deserve _double_.” 

The last of Ren’s crap finally gets auctioned off or shipped over. 

One of Mitaka’s cousins moves into Ren’s apartment, and with the first rent cheque he gets, Ren takes Hux to the city.

“This is an extravagance. We need diesel. And a lot more bedding.” Hux bitches about budgets, Ren shrugs until his neck hurts, but they cannot stop looking at each other. It’s like they were back at First Order Loans, threatening black suit and boring, teal-striped tie. Holding back and not touching until the air crackles between them. 

The bistro’s plenty busy. Candle-lit. Boutique-style and progressive. 

And, thank fuck, it’s mercifully close to their hotel room. Or else Ren’s just gonna have to give his business partner a hand-job in the nearest alleyway, like old times. 

“You need to be spoilt.” Ren uses his fork to spear something from Hux’s still-full plate. 

“I wouldn’t bother with the remoulade.” Hux gestures at the food Ren’s waving about, preoccupied. “The celeriac isn’t a patch on ours. Or the mizuna, for that matter. Or the kale.” 

“No, but the wine’s ok.” Ren refills Hux’s glass. “I meant to tell you, I was reading this article about ridge-and-furrow greenhouses and…” 

Hux lifts his eyebrows at that. Then starts laughing, and doesn’t stop until the owner approaches their table.

But not to throw them out.

Later, they walk back to the place Ren’s booked them into.

“Fuck.”

“Indeed. I think we just became solvent.”

“No, I mean fuck, you were so fucking hot. Brokering a deal with that dude. Negotiating like that. Playing hardball. Fuck I wanna fuck you so bad. And I wanna call you Mr Hux while I do it, ok?”

“I sold the man some beetroot, Kylo. Which I don’t even know for sure we can supply.” Hux shivers. Hunches over a little and scrapes a shoe through the slush. “Frost. Drought. When it comes right down to it, the future’s…not certain.”

Ren’s not so horny that he can’t tell Hux doesn’t mean gardening. 

Although he is pretty goddamn horny.

He puts his hands in the pockets of his suit jacket. It’s been a while since he wore it. His thumb catches on a couple of the tiny metal paperclips he picked up from Hux’s office floor. After the whole Snoke thing. A whole season ago. 

He pulls one free and twists it, as he thinks about all the shit that’s gone down recently.

Hux is waiting for him under a street-lamp. There’s snow in the ruffles of his hair.

First of all Ren pulls one of the paperclips out open. Then he rounds it into a little loop.

Ren goes to Hux and takes his hand and eases the wonky silver ring onto his finger. 

“You’re not gonna lose me, boss. Ok?” 

Hux looks at his left hand. Then at Ren. Blinks in the orange light. Then he nods.

“At least until my amazing chilli harvest rocks up, anyways. Then, who knows..?”

Ren grins, and wonders if a hard punch to the shoulder can be taken as a formal fucking_ ‘yes’_.


	10. Epilogue

The following Summer.

_Outside the window, dawn gilds the endless rows of growing things._

_The greening fields call out to be plucked, cut, made bare. _

_There’s so much to do; it’s too much, but in a good way. _

_Ren feels his muscles thrum, his bones click, his cock harden. Hux is stroking him awake, in the silence. _

_They hold hands and Hux kisses along the inside of Ren’s arm. Word for word, wrist to elbow, it’s a match for Hux’s own tattoo. Only in an easier-to-read fucking language that Gaelic._

“It is myself I must remake,” _Hux recites, slipping lower._

_Ren scoots up the bed._

_Hux goes down on Ren, in the cool morning breeze, and these days Ren has to hold all that flowing bronze hair back, if he wants to watch. _

_Which he does. _

_He grunts and comes into Hux’s hot mouth._

_“The goddamn chillies all died. I checked last night.”_

_Hux touches himself while they kiss. He tastes, decadently, of Ren. _

_“Keep trying.” Hux sounds smug, even as he rubs himself against Ren’s sweat-damp thigh. “Most things take practice to get right.”_

_Ren narrows his eyes and would suspect sabotage, only this is Hux. _

_He hurries him along, with licks and dirty words, until Hux quickly calls out his husband’s name. _

_Hux lays back. Even though they really have to get up._

_There’s a ton of shit to get done. _

_Together._

_After all, the grind doesn’t stop, simply because it’s their fucking honeymoon. _


End file.
